Kepi

In English, the term is a loanword from French: képi, itself a re-spelled version of the Alemannic German: Käppi, a diminutive form of Kappe, meaning 'cap'.

In Europe, the kepi is most commonly associated with French military and police uniforms, though versions of it were widely worn by other armies during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Its predecessor originally appeared during the 1830s, in the course of the initial stages of the occupation of Algeria, as a series of various lightweight cane-framed cloth undress caps called casquette d'Afrique.

[2] As a light and comfortable headdress, it was adopted by the metropolitan (French mainland) infantry regiments for service and daily wear, with the less practical shako being relegated to parade use.

Described as an "ideal headdress - which was cheap, distinctive and easy to produce", the M1886 kepi's only significant drawback was that the sunken crown collected rain.

[5] Cavalry normally wore shakos or plumed helmets, reserving red kepis with light or dark blue bands for wear in barracks.

The decision in 1991 to end conscription in France, and to rely on voluntary enlistment, has led to the readoption of various traditional items for dress wear.

[10] The kepi was adopted in 1854 for wear as a working headdress by police agents and sergents de ville as an alternative to the heavy and less practical bicorne previously worn.

[11] The French National Police discarded their dark blue kepis in 1984 as part of a general updating of uniforms, adopting a low peaked cap.

[14] Customs officers wear a baseball style cap for ordinary duties (since 1994 with many variations) while the Gendarmerie introduced a "soft kepi" in the early 2000s.

For field officers, the caps were often decorated in a French-influenced style,[citation needed] with a dark velvet band around the base and black silk braiding on the crown.

[1] Essentially, the forage cap, described by some troops as "shapeless as a feedbag", was a less-expensive and more comfortable version of the earlier shako with the stiffening removed.

"Stonewall" Jackson wore the plain dark blue round-visored forage cap from his days as an instructor at the Virginia Military Institute), Confederate uniform regulations specified a French-style kepi.

To save leather for shoes and accoutrements, by mid-war Confederate kepi brims often were made of tarred cloth; chinstraps were sometimes omitted.

These included: After the war the U.S. Army issued a series of kepi undress caps, characterised by their increasing smartness and decreasing practicality.

The US Army's and Air Force's current patrol cap, the standard covers in utility uniforms (the ACU and ABU, respectively), is a variation of the flat-topped, visored kepi.

It was replaced with a flat kepi-style cap with a metal rim reinforced crown and baseball cap-styled rounded visor during the Vietnam War.

[20][21] In September 1914 the wide range of peacetime headdresses (shakos, busbies, "Corsican" caps, czapkas and bearskins) still being worn by the Belgian Army, were replaced by the universal "Yser" kepi.

[24] In Nazi Germany, the brown stiff kepi (Schaftmütze) of Hitler's Brownshirt Stormtroopers (SA, Sturmabteilung) and its black version initially worn by the members of the SS (before it was replaced by a peaked cap) were derived from surplus Austrian equipment.

The 1915 pattern uniform adopted a German-inspired peaked cap instead, but after Greece's entry in World War I, the Greek military was re-equipped by the French, and the kepi returned to use.

Since then, it was gradually substituted with the more comfortable side cap and later - during the Second World War - the beret; the kepi remains standard issue with historical uniforms for both the Army and the Police, especially for musicians and education institutions, as part of their ceremonial dress.

In modern ceremonial dress the Latvian National Armed Forces Staff Battalion and musicians of the Central Military Band of the Latvian National Armed Forces both wear backward sloping kepis of the style worn by the Belgian Army immediately prior to World War I. Kepis with a slightly higher back were formerly worn by the Luxembourg Army until 1945.

In Spain, a version of the kepi (actually a low shako), the ros, is used by the Guardia Real (Royal Guard) and the Regimiento de Infantería Inmemorial del Rey for ceremonial functions.

A plainer form of kepi was retained by the Civil Guard as its non-ceremonial headdress for normal police duties, until it was abolished under the 2011 revised regulations and replaced by a baseball cap.

In Switzerland, the kepi was worn as a part of the dress uniforms of senior NCOs (Sergeant major and above) and officers (with additional rank insignia) until the 1995 army reform (Swiss Armed Forces).